The Centers provide a natural starting point in approaching and understanding the Enneagram.  Depending on various definitions by Enneagram writers, the Centers are characterized differently.  Some Enneagram writers ascribe energy fields of thinking, feeling and instinct as residing in three different centers of the human anatomy: head, heart and gut.  In this paradigm, the head houses thinking activity, or the world of concepts.  The heart houses the phenomena of feelings, or of the field of relating.  The gut is the seat of instinct, or the world of surviving.   All energy fields are needed to work in conjunction with one another in order to facilitate human evolution. 

Don Riso and Russ Hudson (authors of The Wisdom of the Enneagram) identify three Centers titled:  the Instinctive Triad, The Feeling Triad, and The Thinking Triad.  They posit that Triads (including the Hornevian and Harmonic Groups) are important for transformational work because they diagnose where primary imbalance lies.  Based on this Riso-Hudson typology, one set of Triads represent three subtle Centers that cluster issues and defenses of the ego self, and the way in which people are hindered to personal transformation.

To fully comprehend the dynamics of the Centers, it is important to be familiar with the original work of George Gurdjieff.  He identified three Centers: moving-instinctive, feeling and thinking.  Gurdjieff also postulated that there were aspects of higher consciousness manifesting in two additional Centers: the Higher Emotional and the Higher Thinking.

These two Higher Centers are intact, fully operational, and are ready for the psyche to use.  However to access the Higher Centers, we need to be fully balanced with the lower Centers.  When the Centers are balanced, we think with the Thinking Center, feel with the Feeling Center, and the body is properly regulated by the Instinctive Center.  It is noted that the Instinctive Center, while not connected with a “Higher Instinctive Center”, operates freely in accordance with other parts of nature.

These Higher Centers are seldom experienced, however, due to a phenomenon called “scrambling” of the three lower centers.  When scrambled, the lower centers become so distorted and off balance that the signal from the Higher Centers cannot get through. Scrambling causes the misuse of the Centers.  For example, we think with our feelings or feel with our instincts, and to have little or no communication between our thinking and our instincts.

Consequently, we struggle to hear our own inner guidance because our minds have too much mental chatter.  The thinking process is inundated with the reverberation of fantasies, imagined dialogues, anxious thoughts, etc.  Likewise, we cut ourselves off to genuine love and compassion due to habitual reactions, ego desires, petty irritations, or the deadening effects caused by depression.  These lower conscious activities substitute the essence of the Higher Centers that provides inner guidance and the power of genuine love. 

Gurdjieff called these substitutions, “the formatory apparatus” which is a “side effect” of the scrambling of the lower three basic Centers.  This formatory apparatus, the scrambling of the Centers, forms the basis of personality.  Personality, therefore, connotes being identified with distortions produced by the scrambling, and not with the proper functions of the Centers.  When the Centers function properly, personality, as we know it, ceases to manifest. 

Any single Center can have imbalance with one of the two other Centers, or with itself. Permutations reveal that there are nine possible combinations of the Centers, thus nine possible ways of scrambling them.  Hence the nine combinations of the scrambling of the Centers form nine Enneagram personalities.

The goal of Inner Work (transcending to our Essence) is to unscramble the Centers and be able to use all three of them with facility and synchronicity.  Spiritual work would extend beyond mental health intervention to focus on connecting the lower and Higher Centers to draw on the essences of the latter.  

However, even in a healthy stage of development the personality identifies with only one Center.  The situation could worsen when the personality deteriorates in health and reaches a Shock Point between 3rd and 4th Levels of Development.  At this Shock Point, another Center becomes imbalanced and is scrambled with the Center that was operating in the healthy range.

A goal of Inner Work would be to unscramble the two Centers.  When we are able to work from two unscrambled Centers we can then draw on some objective perspective to our predicament.  Such therapeutic work would at least help us from sliding to unhealthy levels of development where all three Centers become scrambled and distorted.

Of course, the ultimate goal of Inner Work would be for us to draw effectively from all three Centers.  Once a three-Center balance is restored, there is proper functioning.  We are grounded and centered in our true beings.  Hence, we are open-hearted, clear-minded, and relaxed within our bodies.  We are then able to use higher discernment (now drawing from the two Higher Centers) to effectively discriminate exactly what we need from the present moment.

Much of the initial Inner Work is accessing and developing the Third Center.  Working on the Third Center will rapidly bring objectivity and balance into the personality.  Working on the Third Center also provides for greater stability to engage in deeper inner work.  However, lasting breakthroughs will not be sustained unless all three Centers are eventually worked on, including unscrambling the two-Center “knot.”

Riso and Hudson provide frameworks to conduct this inner work.  The Hornevian Triad provides a framework to develop the Third Center.  The Withdrawns (4s, 5s, and 9s) need to engage the body, the Compliants (1s, 2s, and 6s) need to establish the quiet-mind, and the Assertives (3s, 7s, and 8s) need to open the heart.

The Harmonic Triad provides a framework for inner work to untangle the “personality knot.”  The Competency Group (1s, 3s, and 5s) need to work on opening up their feelings, particularly opening themselves to experiencing grief and other blocked feelings.  The Reactive Group (4’s, 6s and 8s) need to practice quiet-mind and the re-framing of cognitive and perceptual distortions into a more objective reality.  The Positive Outlook Group (2s, 7s, and 9s) need to work on grounding themselves in their own bodies and allowing the primal energy to flow and expand.

It should be noted that the Primary types (3, 6, and 9s) have different problems and hence, different tasks of inner work than do the Secondary Types (1s, 2s, 4s, 5s, 7,s and 8s).  The Primary types need to work directly on the Center that is most problematic for them, the basic Center they represent.  Hence, 3s are most segregated from the Feeling Center, 6s are most segregated from the Thinking Center, and 9s are most segregated from the Instinctive Center.  The Inner Work for the Primary Centers requires education and learning to feel safe with its respective segregated Center.

It is pointed out that the Centers cannot be “willed” into balance.  The regular practice of inner work is required.  We need to learn to relax more fully into ourselves by cultivating Presence.  Riso and Hudson define Presence as “the medium in which the three Centers can be unified.”  Only Presence can harmonize the instincts, the heart, and the mind in such a way to restore the whole and complete nature of our humanity.